5^ 



Sfnfintiatl InveHlujatJonx 345 



willing to codify in a Hciciitific iiinnn<r his Urge exi>eri<'nc«>« of Uiyu, to compBre thi-ir varioun 

 iiionil iind intellectual (iimlitips, to i:lan«ify their natural teiniKTanipntu, antl l' 'o 



(K'Hi-rilx' tliein iis a mtturaliNt would duserilK- tin- fauna of Home new land, wli . nt 



iHyoliological work niiglit Ihi a<c()in|)lislie<n Hut all these great o|>|H>rtunitie.s Ij. ij. 



.'ho maHterH come and go, their ex|>erience« arc lost, i>r alnn«t ho, aiul the ineideiw nh 



they were founded an) forgotten, in8t<-nd of Ixjing Ht4irtd and retiderttl aceeHHilile t<. their 

 succeHsors ; thus our great schools are like mediaeval hospitals, where ca«vt«king was unknown, 

 where pithological collectionH wcni never dreamt of, and where in const'<juence the art of heal- 

 ing made slow and uncertain advance. 



Some 8ch(H>lniast<r may jiut the inquiry: What are the subject* fitted for investigation 

 in schools? I can only reply: Take any Iwok that bears on psychology, select any subject 

 concerning the intellect, enmlions, or wnses in which you may feel an interest ; think how 

 a knowliMlgo of it might lx.'8t \n' advanced either by statistical questioning or hy any other 

 kind of observation, consult with others, plan carefully a mode of proce<lure that shall be as 

 simple as the case admits, then take the inquiry in hand and carry it through." 



I have cited Giilton at leiurth ])ecause in 1924 his words remain as true 

 as in 1880, hut I have faint liope that they will hy repetition here reach a 

 new generation of teachers more responsive than the old. In this country 

 we have exceptional men who ])romulgate new idejis, l)ut the average mind is 

 an inert one. The school a.s lahoiatory, the factory as lahoratory, the prison 

 as lahoratory, and the asylum as lahoratory, these are essentially true 

 conceptions, hut their truth and their profit will he seen in America, in 

 (Jennany — even in France — hefoie they are grasped here! Galton scarcely 

 realised that it required greater ingenium to discover a solvahle problem 

 than to can y it through when proiiounded, and that the average schoolmaster 

 finds it easier to take prescrilxsd measures of his boys — even to fill folios 

 with them — than to discover an important problem and design new measure- 

 ments to solve it. The school anthropometric laboratory must lx» futile if it 

 be only a lahoratory of record and not one of discovery. The fault lies rather 

 with our current acixdemic training than with the schoolniiister — for it lays 

 greater stress on the average man solving set problems, than on finding 

 novel problems himself. 



The boy is never discouraged, and Galton retained his boyhood to the 

 end. He could put on one side his teaching as to eugenics because the time 

 wiis not ripe for it, and propound it with all his youtliful enthusiasm nearly 

 forty years later; the relative barrenness of the harvest resulting from his 

 school anthropometric proposals did not cause him to despair of profits 

 resulting from anthropometric inquiry in schools. In the eighty-thiril year 

 of his life, thirty-three years after his first attempt, he returns to the chai'ge, 

 and with adilitional proposals, which would immensely increase the work — 

 while needle.ss to say they would enormously increase the utility — of school 

 anthropometric laboratories. 



In 1 905, at the London Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, 

 Galton gave an address on "Anthropometry at Schools'." 



"Anthropometry, or the art of measuring the physical and mental faculties of human 

 beings, enables a shorthand description of any individual to he given l>y recording the mejisure- 

 nients of a small sample of his dimensions and qualities. These will sutlicieutly detine his 

 bodily proportions, his massiveness, strength, agility, keenness of sense, energy, health, intei- 



' Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. xiv, pp. 93-98. London, 1906. 

 pan 44 



